Star Wars: Brothers in Arms

Even after we subdued or killed the rest of the shinies, things were still extremely tense.
Dak had decided not to immediately shoot the Jedi, but he did want them to turn over their weapons. And they, having just been attacked by their supposed allies, were not excited by the idea of being unarmed. Can’t say I blame them one bit. If Dak had tried to tell me to turn over my weapon I would have clocked him, and I wasn’t even the main target!

While I appreciated that he had decided to hesitate on executing this “order 66” his behavior was still throwing me for a loop. He kept yelling about orders and telling Freq he needed to follow them too, even tried to convince ME that I should disarm the Jedi. I thought Dak had learned more about us with all the missions we’d been on. Wait, scratch that. He HAD learned more about us, he KNEW better than to think that Cricket and Figgy were conspiring traitors, but he still wanted to follow those ridiculous orders. When they wouldn’t give up their lightsabers he even tried to STUN Cricket. You’re a good shot Dak, but he’s a Jedi and he saw it coming.

I was getting so frustrated by how single-minded he was being “I’m a clone. This is my job. I have to follow orders” blah blah BLAH! You’re a damn person! You have thoughts and feelings! You have your own individual life and experience! Don’t choose to throw that all away, and pretend to be a damn droid. He didn’t even want to acknowledge that he HAD a choice. That is absolutely awful. I left all of my own kind behind when they tried to tell me I was a runt and couldn’t be a good warrior. I chose the option that they swore didn’t exist for me. And when your friends are telling you that you have a choice?!? To say you don’t have one? POODOO! That’s a big stinkin’ pile of day-old bantha poodoo. You have a choice, you know you do, you’re pretending you don’t so you can hide your decision behind a veil of “orders”.

Seriously, Freq just had the closest thing to a brother and father killed in front of him. Cricket and Figgy just felt basically ALL of their friends die. We just watched footage of the building with Jedi kids in it burning and you’re going to bitch about a handful of clones whose designations you didn’t even know being shot or cut down in self defense? Yeah, it really sucks that this is how it went down. Aroro was a fool and he got them killed by telling them to execute that order when there was no way they could stand against us and the Jedi. When the going gets tough you should be able to look to your friends for help, not try to stunblast them in the face!

Anyway, he finally calmed down enough to agree not to murder the Jedi. We bound the stunned trooper and went back to Lon Wyn’s estate. He and Freq went and reported back to buy us some time. Of course CT-jerkface woke up and signaled command so we had to ditch our plan and run. Freq got in contact with our old Bothan buddy, who it turns out it some totally famous Separatist ground commander. He agreed to come pick us up if we could make it to their ship. Which means we needed to get offplanet without being shot down…which means we really needed my ship… this should be fun

I never thought I needed to make log entries. My job is to follow orders and complete the mission, not succumb to personal trivialities. That sort of time is better spent studying mission specs or cleaning kit. But today is different. Today is special. Guess there’s a first for everything.

After the team took out that terentatek, supposedly a fearsome creature of legend, I didn’t think the day could get any more interesting. Boy, was I wrong. We found some interesting information in Lon Win’s files pertaining to Freq’s origins. Turns out his “daddy” had inserted him into the standard clone training regimen as some sort of control subject for his first batch of Black troopers. Freq as a control? That just seems ironic. For some reason, his batch were the only ones to survive incubation. And apparently, the intensified combination of both Jedi and elite commando training drove them a bit psychotic. Yeah, that’s putting it lightly. That blasted Kamino di’kut even went so far as to release the Black troopers into the galaxy under the false pretense of protecting the Republic, reporting to him as their Ring Master, just to see what would happen. Well, that sure got back to him when Onyx One, aka “Black Prime”, came calling. Apparently, he wasn’t too happy being duped and extracted Win for further questioning.

Impressively, we were actually able to track down One and Win, with a good amount of detective work on the part of General S’ssra. We attempted to confront them with the aid of Commander Aroyo, Sergeants Dor and Tempo, and a squad of farm-fresh shinies at a warehouse facility owned by Win in the lower levels. Unfortunately, One was ready for us, and we soon found ourselves divided and trapped between forcefields. Better yet, One decided we might like some corrosive gas to boot. And I just got this new armor. Well, I guess it was a bit too shiny anyway. Luckily, with a well-placed rocket, I was able to slow the dispersal of the gas as the Generals figured out a way to cut a path to safety. I suppose Freq may have helped with venting some of the gas as well, but that’s debatable. Of course, he then had to go alone to try to “give another chance” to his brother Onyx One. How many chances do you give a chakaar who’s tried to kill you? As expected, Freq immediately encountered resistance in the form of auto-turrets, so the rest of the squad came to his aid.

We made short work of the turrets and soon found Onyx One and Lon Win, or at least what was left of him. One had apparently just shot him, and was ranting about trying to make him “restart the program” and how he needed to “save the Republic”. What a zealot. We then went about our duty of actually saving the Republic by taking One down. It wasn’t a pretty fight, and a few good troopers were lost to heavy repeating cannon fire, but the last member of the Onyx Ring finally fell. And that’s when the unthinkable happened. We got the order no trooper ever thought he’d hear: Order 66. The Contingency Orders document states the order bureaucratically, “In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander (Chancellor), GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) until a new command structure is established.” In other words, the Jedi have committed treason against the Republic and are to be shot on site. The order was sent from the Chancelor himself.

All hell broke loose as Aroyo immediately started firing on the Generals. That butcher would kill anyone to complete the mission. Of course, the shinies all blindly obeyed as well. Dor hesitated, good man. But Tempo… Tempo opened fire too. The Generals were completely taken by surprise, but at least they were skilled enough to avoid the barrage of blaster bolts. Specialist Keera very quickly put herself in the middle of the crossfire and started taking Aroyo down to size. Then Freq showed his true colors, pitching his blaster and drawing his lightsaber. He went right for Aroyo, and I just barely heard the Commander insult his allegiance before Freq removed his head. Can’t say I was sad to see him go, but no one deserves to die like that.

Then there was me. What does one do in a case like this when their whole life has been spent in service to the Republic? The Jedi have always treated me well, especially Generals S’ssra and Kkiod. I’ve seen no hint of betrayal from either of them. But I can’t completely ignore a direct order from the highest power. I tried to assume command of the remaining troopers and have them stand down, but they ignored me. Being the shinies that they were, General S’ssra made short work of them. I tried to physically knock some sense into one trooper, but he shoved me off. The only way to stop him was with a powerful stun blast. And then Tempo had to try and take on the General himself. It almost looked like he was about to get a shot in when Dor snapped out of it and took his brother down. What a shame, he’d been such a loyal soldier.

Now I have a difficult choice ahead of me. Should I attempt to subdue the Generals for questioning? And what about Freq? Is he considered a traitor too? Even if we all kiss and make up, how could we ever hope to get off Kamino, an entire planet covered in millions of clones?

Just when I thought we had gotten out of the thick of things, I find myself in a moral quandary like nothing I’ve ever faced.

We were tracking down the Kaminoan to his family’s “estate” in the lower city. He was still alive when Onyx took him, so he must want him for something. And whatever he wants is probably bad for us, so we’ve got to find them soon. When we got inside this massive warehouse all these forcefields popped up, separating us and keeping us trapped so the acidic toxic gas could kill us. So I’m guessing that means he knows we’re here. He’ll have to try harder than that though! We got out and headed down in the direction that Freq “felt” Onyx was. We let him go down first, he wanted to try and talk him down. I don’t think any of us, including Freq, really thought that would work, but I’m sure it’ll make him feel better knowing he tried.

There were some ceiling turrets, one of which I got to smash right back up into its hidey hole but it didn’t slow us down long. Apparently it was just long enough though…because Onyx was shaking the dead Kaminoan by the neck, yelling at his corpse. Crazy he might be, but he was still a tough little osik. Just as we knocked him out all the clones started going crazy too! Okay, well not ALL of them. But Aroyo started yelling at the shinies and they started shooting at Cricket and Figgy.

Shinies don’t have any good sense about them yet, so I felt bad for them, but Aroyo knew what he was doing. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was damned if we beat up a tyrannatechy, inhaled a bunch of toxic acid and beat up Onyx just to Aroyo, the jerkiest butcher I know, turn on us. Was he just waiting for a chance for us to be tired so he could get rid of us and say Onyx did it?!? Because he seriously misjudged the situation.

He started screaming about orders and through a lot of yelling I got the idea that orders had come from way up the chain of command for ALL Jedi to be executed. And they even had a number for this? What the hell? Who makes these rules? At least Dor was conflicted… I don’t know why Tempo didn’t use his own head to consider things instead of just blindly accepting these insane orders… He’s gone now… SERIOUSLYWHATTHEHELL IS GOING ON?!? I know clones can think for themselves, but these shinies don’t know it yet, and now they won’t ever get to learn. We had to stop them somehow, and most of them died. At least Aroyo did too! Freq took his head clean off! He’s experienced and should have been leading the shinies better than that! You don’t even ask for a confirmation on an order like that?! Seriously? You double check that poodoo before gunning down your allies that have saved your hides more than once! Has the whole galaxy gone mad?

Rain is Icky

After essentially shutting down that planet for the next century or so we met up with some main Republic fleet ships. Master Tiin had clearly been a bit disturbed by the news of the Onyx Ring clones, but that’s not the type of thing you blab around about either. So after we made some repairs, and the boys got issued their new sets of armor we set course for Kamino. Technically we were going to help assimilate new troops, but we were also doing some research into where Freq came from and where these Onyx guys could have popped up from too.

Kamino is not my favorite planet. With all that rain it just…ugh my fur is always puffing out and it makes me look silly. Keera is not silly. Keera is intimidating! And it’s really hard to act like that when your having a bad fur day. Anyway, we met up with Tuan We who seemed pretty okay, although she doesn’t exactly have great “bedside manner” when it comes to the clones. She took some samples, ran some tests, and determined that Freq was definitely NOT made in their main cloning facility, but that he did get trained with all the others. Which means someone snuck him into the batch. Based on some stories from her about this one scientist, Lon Wind, he definitely sounded like the one who did it. So we went to pay him a visit and politely ask him some questions…

That never works for us of course. We flew to the other city where his estate was, and nobody answered. We even rang the doorbell all protocol-like and stuff. Freq talked to his …spirit guide? I mean, it looked like he was talking to himself, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t cracked. So supposedly “death could await us” inside. We do dangerous stuff pretty much ALL the time, but its still creepy to have some spirit say that. I thought we should blast the place with missiles, but everyone kept insisting on finding a way in and getting information.

We bypassed the security grid and popped open one of the doors. We started to work in, see what we could find and these angry critters started popping out from around the corners, clawing and biting and knocking people out by shrieking at them. They really hurt my ears, so I knocked one out and we got the other one too. There was the big door so I figured the secret cloning room was behind it and opened it. Yeah, nope.

There was this HUGE beasty in there, and he did not look friendly. It was a …tranntarack? trenntytrack, tyrranarack? oh, terentatek. Anyways, scary. So I closed the door again. Cricket rigged it with explosives quickly and we started to get the heck out of there. I did NOT think that door could hold that thing. More of the screaming beasties came scuttling down the hallway too. Yup, definitely time for a “tactical exit”

They were starting to hurt now, and there was only so many places they could run in this building. One of the Onyx jerks was hurt and drew our attention first. I had gotten tired of pounding on these guys and them healing themselves so fast, it was just rude. Well, this lurdo, when he was down and we had him nearly finished, decided to try to take us with him by pulling a thermal detonator and just blowing himself up. Luckily, he didn’t have much strength left because most of the blast was directed down at him. So I got a bit banged up, but he was way way dead.

His buddy starting running towards the hole in the wall that Cricket had come through. Luckily, he was the only one left and everyone else was as sick of him running as I was. Just before he escaped outside Vi’tig blocked and downed him. There wasn’t anything to be done for any of the Council that had been here, they were all dead. But Freq was able to detect that Saesee Tiin was somewhere underneath us and sliced a hole in the floor for us to drop down. He was tucked in a corner in special Jedi energy “chains” but we got him down quickly.

Despite being pleased to be freed, he had a lot of questions, and I reminded everyone and told him that we needed to get going while we could. I didn’t feel like getting stuck here forever. That wasn’t why I left home. Getting back to our boat and the station hub we caught up with Oreo. We’d told Tiin about his behavior and I knew he was going to get taken down a few pegs. The soldiers were finishing packing up what they could and set charges on the rest that they could and we took to space. It was not an easy trip up to be sure, but we did make it. Tiin kept bemoaning that they weren’t going to be able to use this ship for such a long time while it was being repaired. And hey, it sucks, but really, if the Republic hadn’t been being such control freaks and getting into fights with and terrorizing the locals this probably wouldn’t have happened. So considering how many people we were able to save, I call it a good day.

When we got back to base the boys got their “shiny” new armor (but don’t call it that, they hate that haha). I bought myself some new upgrades for my ship because it seems like every time we head to a planet we get attacked. Especially since Master Tiin was giving us a mission (one real, and one secret) and we were headed to Kamino to acclimate a new batch (while looking for clues about Freq’s brothers). It would be nice to just land on a planet once, but who knows with us. Not that I’m worried mind you, I’ll just have to punch someone in the face is all… with a missile.

I’ve been aboard enough space stations to know that all those alarms cannot be a good thing. Dak recovered quickly and shot the droideka who was ready to open fire on me. I wish I could have enjoyed a true sigh of relief, but immediately I started making my way towards our ship. The Jedi finished off the last of the droid squad and started our way as well. Cricket broke into the intercom system and told people to head towards where our ship had boarded, or the nearest escape pod.

I couldn’t figure out why Freq was falling so far behind, but after I learned what he’d done, I know he saved a great many lives. He’d managed to connect with the Force and quite literally hold the station together as it was starting to collapse into the upper atmosphere. Cricket tried to help slow the systems collapse, but safeguards had been taken down. There was no way to save the station. I loaded some personnel into our hold and got us ready for take off, Figrin hurriedly shuffled anyone possible on board. Dak and Cricket took off in their fighters. When we couldn’t wait any longer I commed Freq to have him hop into an escape pod and we all watched from our ships as the station broke up into the atmosphere.
The fighting was still going on where our Mando buddies had shown up, but otherwise it was starting to calm. With the spaceport permanently out of order, the planet became useless to both sides. As we unloaded their refugees on the main Republic ship they were swiftly called to the bridge.

They had a comm call from planetside which was Oreo waiting to patch through a LPM elder. It was that same old guy that had sounded pretty sensible. Until he told us how they were the ones responsible for the complete destruction of the station AND they had lied to us about Jedi Master Saesee Tiin and they’d had him prisoner the whole time.

I was on their side of this fight really. I even tried to tell people that we should just blow up the station so it wouldn’t fall into Seppie hands. But I was going to get all the people off of it first! I felt bad for Barrans, but they were total dicks about this! And then telling us that we can come “fetch” Master Tiin before the planet becomes completely inaccessible, gee thanks! He had a point about the attempted assassination, but if that’s really what was concerning him, maybe they should have turned him over when we got Ororo to back down when we were there last time! When was that? Oh, yeah, that was right after they took US as prisoners! …poodooheads

Whatever, we still needed to get our men off the ground, and get back Tiin, so we rushed planetside. We were still tracking our loose Onyx dude, so we knew we had to be really really fast to get Tiin. Upon arrival at the LPM camp the cannons started firing on us! Seriously you guys? NOT cool! We made short work of them, but Freq went surging on ahead and ran straight into one of the Onyx ring boys. Harumph, at least I wouldn’t have to knock any LPM heads about the cannons. But at this point I was mad! this Freq copies were just as deserving of a taste of my powerhammer as any fool!Thaaaaat’s probably why I ended up nearly getting myself killed…sometimes I just can’t help myself. Sometimes a kitty’s just gotta smash!

One of the good things about having Jedi in the group is their neat healing tricks. As everyone else caught up to me it became more of a fair fight against the two Onyx ringers. The LPM council clearly hadn’t stood a chance, and their bodies were strewn about the room. That sucks, but they were being jerks to us!

We had the enemy divided, and pursued them into siderooms. I rushed into the room to the side of one of them and throwing down a shelf I smashed through the wall. Excellent pincer movement if I do say so myself! And I do…because I’m awesome. Of course the little wimp scurried away before I had a chance to pound on him! Grrrr, why can’t they just stay still so I can hit them hard!?!…really hard!

The Separatist invasion force was closing fast, and we’re a tough, but I don’t know if we can fight off all of them. We tried calling in help, but it’s unlikely they can make it here in time. If we wait until the fighting gets to the ground, we’d already be on the losing side so we decided to take to space.

As we were making our way up the protected channel we immediately encountered droid fighters. Smaller, faster ships we testing out our front lines before their heavy hitters arrived. There were more of them than us, but we ended them anyway. Not without some damage of course, but at least Cricket’s ship didn’t get totally swiss cheesed this time.

As we cleared Batanus’ atmosphere we could see the situation was more dire than we had expected. The armada was upon us already, and we didn’t have the firepower. I kept saying maybe it was just worth it to destroy the station link so that the planet would be cut off from both sides. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way the Republic had been treating the locals and I think they’d be better off if there planet wasn’t being considered such a valuable commodity in wartime. Just then our old buddies from Hoth dropped out of hyperspace! Their ships were ancient, but tough, just like the Brothers of the Tong themselves. Immediately they started walloping on the Separatist ships. It’s good to have some friends in the universe :)

Good news like that can’t keep you too distracted in battle though, distress calls were coming in from the station, which was under heavy attack. If we let them take the station we’d be in a really bad spot so while our buddies kept the big ships occupied we headed in to smash some metalheads together. Upon boarding the station we found two droid squads right off the bat, with Magnaguards taking point. I was reminded again, how awesome Force powers can be as Freq sent one of them flying back into his squad, bowling them all over.

We concentrated on destroying the one squad and then turned our attention to the other. With their Force powers making quick work of the clankers there wasn’t any point of me running in and hammering, more’s the pity. Just as droideka’s rounded the corner near me and were opening fire the entire station shifted. Jumped more like, actually. Most of us kept our balance, but poor Dak was using his jetpack at the time and got hit with a wall. Ergo, Dak got hit with a space station…in the face.

Alarm klaxons were sounding and calls for “abandon ship” came over the speakers. I’d just like to go on record now, that it was not my fault that the space station broke…I didn’t do it…promise

The Jedi tried to get some information out of the LPM prisoners, but they weren’t precisely …“outgoing”. While they were working on that I went out to get some drinks with Dor and Tempo to hear their side of how they thought things were going. Even they knew things were messed up on Barran, although they thought I was maybe stretching it a bit by pointing all of my furry fingers at Oreo.

Freq and Dak had managed to get a clue from the damaged ship and we all went to follow it to the owner of the ship. He was out of his office, but through splicing into his terminal we found more clues. Someone called the “ringmaster” had set up the attack, and paid for the “rental” of the ships quite well. In speaking to his neighbor we found that he had a bit of a gambling problem and a fondness for Twi’lek dancers. There was only one joint that would appease both obsessions at the port but before they could investigate any further they got called to the command center.

The Separatists were launching dropships to three locations, undoubtedly attack forces. It didn’t look like enough for a full-scale invasion, but definitely enough to warrant concern. Splitting the clones into groups we headed toward one droppoint with Craws (who Dor had suggested talking to anyway).

We were in a bad spot as soon as we arrived, the droids literally had the higher ground. dwarf Spider droids hung off the cliff face and shot down at us. We had all split up in the trees, so they’d have to spread out their fire, but they needed stopping fast. The clones worked on that and Cricket launched himself up on top of the cliff. I climbed up there too, ready to clobber some droids. The Spider Droid up there was not the dwarf kind, which was just fine by me. Cricket and I did a number on him, and with a last blow from his lightsaber he was down for the count. The clones were doing well on their own, but I smashed one of the last dwarf spiders to help out.

We grabbed some techno doo-dah out of the main droid, reported in and started heading back to base. Just as we were about to get on our boats, natives appeared everywhere around us. They were armed and we were outnumbered. The Labor Party soldiers ordered us to surrender, none of us liked it, but we didn’t have much choice. They disarmed and separated us, and into the boats we went along the winding maze of rivers.

Finally we arrived at some compound, but none of us would have been able to find it on a map.

The locals are terrible hosts

Good news is it doesn’t seem the explosion came from the direction of my ship. Bad news is there’s LPM goons running around all over the place with blasters. I poked my head around the corner of a door and BLAM-O they start shooting at me immediately! I just got here. I have not had enough time to do anything worth enemies yet. Which means what? That’s right, now I’m pissed off!

The layout of this port made it annoying to pick off all of the terrorists, but we got them all in the end. The one that shot at me turned out to be a total wussy. I got in his face for a fair fight and he just kept backing up and running away. But he still kept shooting at me. If you are scared of me, then bloody run away as fast as your little twig legs can carry you. If you want to fight me, then stop being a pansy and stand your ground! At least I finally backed him into a corner, so when I did get to clobber him it was straight into a laser beam.

There was no way we’d be questioning him, but the guys did manage to knock out a couple of the others. And Oreo proceeded to drag some unconscious woman across metal beams. I get wanting to question them, information can be important. But his first choice was to strap this guy to a boat and sail through acidic waters?!?! How the hell is that helpful?!?! I could see it being fun if the guy had made me really mad at him, but it wouldn’t get me information. Even I know that!

I mean, I’m not stupid. Not really. Just…physical. My body tends to act before my brain finishes thinking. That’s why it always scares me when I feel like I’m the only one making any sense. It takes me longer to get to the right idea, but I do get there. But when I have to be the one reminding Oreo that the Jedi might be able to help with interrogation? …well, this army might be in a wee bit o’ trouble.

Coruscant was starting to get annoying. Too many smells, too many creatures. Felt good to get out into space again. Need to name my new “permanently assigned” Citadel cruiser. I want to call it my Pretty Bird but Dak freaked out at that idea, he wants it to be scarier sounding. But really? I am Keera, the most smashingist of smashing breaker kitties everywhere! I don’t need a scary name to scare people, I do that all on my own!

Anyway, it’ll have to be settled later because we didn’t even make it to Gateway station before we christened the ship in battle. I do love blowing things up, but in a cruiser trying to fight off little vulture droids is super annoying. They keep moving when all I want to do is destroy them in a ball of fiery death. Is that too much to ask? Paw!

We did lose one of our troop transports in the battle, which really rustled my fur. Could have used some more help from Gateway Station in my opinion, but they had their priorities, and we weren’t it. They did let us land there and gather ourselves before we went down to the planet. They had this corridor down to the planet that we had to fly through. Good thing that those other ships tilted out of way as we went down, because my pretty bird’s got MISSILES!

Not that I would have just blown someone out of my way…maybe…heeheehee!

We landed and set down on Bay 6 B-Deck and met up with Tempo and Dor. Missed those silly little clone boys. Aroyo has gotten very…angry being on this planet it seems. I mean, it sucks, don’t get me wrong. The Labor Party Militia has been totally annoying. Being on a planet where a quarter of the people are trying to kill you?

I can’t believe they trapped Saesee Tiin and firebombed him. Not nice LPM, not nice! Can’t believe Tiin didn’t feel it coming though. Jedi are tough little buggers, that’s certainly what I have learned from Cricket. Don’t know how I feel about Figgy yet.

I get that Baranus has all this super special copper listerite that is the crème de la crème (oooh cream, now I’m thirsty!) but these people don’t seem to happy with the Republic. If they were with the Separatists I wouldn’t have a problem hitting them upside the head, because those jerks are serious nerfherding scum bullies. But they don’t seem to want to be part of either side. If you are my enemy, I will kill you. But if you just aren’t willing to fight for the same side as me? …I don’t know, I guess it depends.

If this planet sucks so much, and it’s full of Opportunist “Pinkers”, I’m not sure it is worth it. Before we could really figure stuff out things started going BOOM! My ship better be okay! Or these LPM fools will be getting a major hurt from a majorly angry kitty in their face!